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For fans of multi-point peace plans, back in fashion in the Trump era, it’s your lucky day. According to reports, President Donald Trump is proposing a new 15-point plan to end the war with Iran and reach a settlement that will sustain peace for the foreseeable future.
There’s just one wrinkle: Iran has to agree too.
In a sign of the regime’s fracturing, the IRGC through state media had rejected the plan outright, saying Iran intended to fight. But Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, while denying any talks with the U.S., said Iran is reviewing the ceasefire plan.
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The full plan has not been revealed officially or even leaked. Fourteen points emerged publicly via Israel’s Channel 12, and it appears to be a rehashed version of a set of proposals put forward during the brief war in 2025.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed on Wednesday what she called "speculative points,” saying the administration has "never confirmed that full plan” though adding that there are "elements of truth” to what is out there.
In this first edition of Newsweek’s Dissected, we slice into the purported Trump plan point-by-point to reveal what’s been proposed and what it really means. In an age of extreme partisanship and swirling misinformation, nobody is safe from dissection.
1) Iran must dismantle its existing nuclear capabilities.
Some will recall with a raised eyebrow the alleged "total obliteration” of Iranian nuclear facilities by Trump not even a year ago. But here we are.
This demand goes beyond earlier limits under the Obama-era JCPOA. Military strikes showed the limits of force against a dispersed, knowledge-based program. True dismantlement would require intrusive, sustained access and verification.
Tehran will want strong guarantees and clear gains. Enemies with benefits, if you will.
2) Iran must commit never to pursue nuclear weapons.
Iran already claims adherence to this principle under the NPT, while at the same time letting the regime's hotheads loose in state media to threaten Tehran’s enemies with nuclear annihilation.
Few were buying claims of purity of intentions, and Tehran’s covert work on uranium enrichment and ambiguity about how close it is to crossing certain thresholds in its nuclear capabilities had become radioactive.
The core issues in this demand are how to define "pursuit” and how will this be enforced? Are dual-use activities going to be prohibited? A pledge without precise language, verification, and penalties lacks credibility.
The devil is in the details. But those are hard to agree when each side sees the other as the devil incarnate.
3) There will be no uranium enrichment on Iranian territory.
Zero enrichment far exceeds JCPOA standards. It was an Iranian red line before the war, framed as a sovereign right and vital to its civilian energy needs.
Foreign fuel supply could replace domestic enrichment, but Iran’s deep mistrust—especially after U.S. withdrawal from past agreements—makes this a potential deal-breaker unless imposed by extreme pressure or paired with ironclad guarantees.
Western mistrust of Iran is understandable too. Why did Tehran enrich uranium to 60 percent purity if it has no military ambitions for its nuclear program? At the very least, Tehran wanted to use the threat as leverage.
Play dumb games, win dumb prizes.
4) Iran must hand its stockpile of some 450 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the near future, in a timetable to be agreed.
This targets the most immediate proliferation risk: 60 percent enriched uranium drastically shortens breakout time. Removal or dilution would quickly reduce danger and is verifiable, making it one of the more concrete demands.
But the stockpile is also Tehran’s strongest bargaining chip and wartime deterrent. Any transfer would depend on the timeline: Phased removal matched to immediate, irreversible benefits.
There are also questions about exactly where this uranium is.
For the deal to work, full transparency is needed from a regime that likes to hide its nuclear secrets from the world deep underground where even the bunker-busters can’t reach.
5) The Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo nuclear facilities must be dismantled.
Again: Total obliteration, anyone? Perhaps not.
These sites sit at the heart of Iran’s enrichment and conversion capabilities. Dismantlement implies permanent disablement, not repurposing as under the JCPOA.
Airstrikes, while clearly very damaging, showed how hard this is to achieve militarily. Diplomacy would need to achieve what force alone did not.
For Iran, tearing down flagship facilities would be an enormous strategic and symbolic concession, making a face-saving alternative—conversion under strict international control—the most plausible fallback.
6) The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, must be granted full access, transparency and oversight inside Iran.
Verification is the backbone of any viable deal. This would likely require restoration and expansion of Additional Protocol–style inspections, real‑time monitoring, and comprehensive material accounting after a period of opacity during the war.
Iran may tolerate intrusive access, and end its stonewalling of the IAEA, if benefits are tangible and durable. But Tehran has sharply criticized the IAEA in recent months and years, accusing it of being a stooge for the U.S. It must change heart.
The U.S. and allies will insist on it given past concealment. Among the demands, this may be one of the most achievable. Without full inspections, misperception and worst‑case assumptions dominate policy.
Hans Blix, the former IAEA director‑general, embodied that dilemma in Iraq before the 2003 war.
His inspectors never found active weapons of mass destruction, but because access was incomplete and cooperation uneven, uncertainty itself became a catalyst for a conflict.
And we all know how well that turned out. Iraq is a bleak warning to Trump. But it’s a lesson for what’s left of the Iranian regime too. Bluff at your own risk.
7) Iran must abandon its regional proxy 'paradigm.'
This shifts from arms control to the regime’s aggressive and destabilizing behavior through proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah, among others.
Iran’s network of allied militias provides deterrence, influence, and strategic depth. But Washington and Israel, and the Gulf states, view it as a primary source of regional instability and violence.
Tehran has historically refused to include regional conduct in nuclear talks, treating it as non-negotiable. Asking Iran to abandon this paradigm effectively demands a rewrite of its post‑1979 security doctrine.
It would be a tacit surrender of its strategic power in the Middle East, forcing it to reconsider how it can build and maintain influence in the region. Developing its economic power as a positive force is one route. The regime may have other ideas.
8) Iran must cease the funding, direction and arming of its regional proxies.
This operationalizes point seven but faces even greater obstacles. Iran denies control over these groups—a claim nobody is buying—and frames assistance as defensive or requested by partners.
To most, Iran is the delinquent parent of feral kids and it needs to get a grip on them.
Verification would be far more difficult than nuclear monitoring given covert finance and arms channels. Any workable compromise would likely require narrower, theater-specific commitments rather than a sweeping ban that is nearly impossible to enforce.
It also creates something of a lose-lose situation for Iran. If Tehran does show goodwill and cut ties to its proxies, its influence significantly reduces in the region, but it will still likely be blamed if those militias go rogue and lash out anyway.
How can it prove that it’s not responsible for the violence of groups that until recently were its proxies, when the nature of that support was covert in the first place?
It would need to rely on U.S. intelligence getting to the truth of the matter, and Washington successfully reassuring its allies and regional partners of such.
9) The Strait of Hormuz must remain open and function as a free maritime corridor.
To paraphrase "Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth: the Strait of Hormuz is already open if you’re brave enough.
Hormuz is a global economic chokepoint and one of Iran’s most potent leverage tools. Guaranteeing open passage would stabilize markets but asks Tehran to relinquish a key retaliatory option, one it knows causes Trump especially deep pain at home.
Iran may push for conditional access or reciprocal guarantees that the strait won’t be used to threaten it. Enforcement would likely require deconfliction mechanisms or multinational monitoring, each politically sensitive.
10) Iran’s missile program must be limited in both range and quantity, with specific thresholds to be determined at a later stage.
This proposes conventional arms control against Iran’s primary deterrent, especially given its weak air force. But leaving it off the table would invite more trouble down the line if Israel and the U.S. feel the Iranian missile program is posing a renewed threat.
Range and stockpile caps could sharply reduce regional threat perceptions and indirectly limit nuclear delivery potential. Iran has long declared missiles off-limits, and verification would be difficult given mobility and concealment.
The vague promise to define thresholds later merely delays the hardest negotiations. But it is also a poison pill that threatens to slowly kill off a peace deal later, even if progress is made elsewhere, unless there is a serious shift in Tehran’s thinking.
And there hasn’t been a serious shift in Tehran’s thinking for 47 years. Though maybe the vaporization of Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani will focus minds.
11) Any future use of missiles would be restricted to self-defense.
This is a normative pledge rather than a technical limit. While attractive politically, "self-defense” is elastic and easily claimed after the fact.
Enforcement would be murky without an agreed arbiter. Iran may accept this more readily than hard caps, but its security value would be limited without accompanying, measurable constraints.
And wasn’t this part of the problem in the first place?
Iran’s growing capacity to defend itself from the air and protect its missile program, nuclear sites, and other key military infrastructure was argued by the U.S. and Israel as a casus belli, and why the threat from Tehran was deemed to be immediate.
These air defenses need to be good, but not quite good enough to defend against the American missiles supplied to Washington’s allies and partners in the Middle East.
The U.S. is saying Iran can bring a knife to a gunfight.
12) Iran would receive a full lifting of sanctions imposed by the international community.
Sanctions relief is the centerpiece incentive and the main sequencing battleground.
For Iran’s battered economy, the root of the mass protests that preceded this war, reintegration into global trade and finance could justify painful concessions. But only if relief is broad, early, and durable.
The U.S. and allies will want leverage and phasing, and ironclad guarantees of Iranian compliance on the terms agreed for peace.
Iran will demand protection against reversal, stung by the JCPOA experience. Implementation would be legally and politically complex, especially in Washington, where many hawks are nested.
Sanctions relief is a big test of political will for both sides.
13) The US would assist Iran in advancing its civilian nuclear program, including electricity generation at the Bushehr nuclear plant.
This is the goodwill signal: Give up weapons pathways and gain accepted, supported civilian nuclear energy.
In theory it undermines Iran’s case for enrichment by guaranteeing fuel and cooperation. What more does Tehran want?
In practice, mutual distrust looms large, and the regime in Tehran will lose a lot of face on this issue given it has made this a sovereignty question.
Tehran fears dependency and hidden strings. Washington faces domestic and allied skepticism. Limited, tightly monitored cooperation is the most plausible version.
For Trump, it's another Venezuela. Pay for military operations by claiming a lucrative stake in what comes after. There, it’s oil. Here, it’s nuclear energy.
Most Iranians just want the lights back on.
14) The so-called "snapback" mechanism, which allows for the automatic reimposition of sanctions if Iran fails to comply, would be removed.
Removing snapback addresses Iran’s not unreasonable fear that sanctions relief can vanish overnight because of America’s mercurial democracy.
But it weakens enforcement by making renewed international sanctions slower and subject to Security Council vetoes.
This point crystallizes the deal’s central trade‑off: Iranian certainty versus Western leverage.
Any durable alternative would need new, credible enforcement tools to replace snapback’s automatic deterrent effect.
15) ???
The mystery missing point. Renaming Tehran University as Trump College? Trump Tower Tehran? We’ll just have to wait and see.
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